Silicon Valley Round Table for the Global Vaccination Alliance

Sphaera was invited to attend a Silicon Valley roundtable with GAVI – the Global Vaccine Alliance – to explore how technology can support them in reaching the currently unreachable 240 million non-immunized children in the Global South.

Catherine Cheney from Devex took interviews with some of the delegates, including Astrid Scholz.

Astrid’s interview appears below.

“While it seems clear why Silicon Valley startups should partner with Gavi, the case may be harder to make for larger companies that might see global health efforts as corporate social responsibility rather than core to business”, said Astrid Scholz, founder of Sphaera, enterprise software as a service she describes as infrastructure technology for the social sector.

“Gavi has such an interesting use case for leveraging technology to take supply chain ideation to implementation at scale,” she added.

One of the questions that came up at the lunch is what the Gavi process is for entrepreneurs to enter their pipeline, and she what Gavi really needs is its own AngelList, a platform where startups raise money and recruit. In conversations with Berkley, she is pitching her platform as one that would combine an online marketplace, social network, and workflow engine that could meet Gavi’s needs.

“They have recognized the limits of their way of operating and are exploring how technology can help them achieve their desired outcomes more effectively,” she said.